Republican Citizens, Precarious Subjects

This study offers close readings of cinematic and literary representations of the contemporary French workplace, focusing on the dilemmas faced by French workers of different ages, sexes, classes, and ethnicities, workers depicted as being caught between the apparent certainties of French republican citizenship and the precarious forms of subjectivity characteristic of post-Fordism.

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Over recent decades concerns at the increased scarcity and precarity of salaried employment have dominated political struggles, theoretical debates and cultural representations in France. This study argues that such concerns are evidence of a profound shift in contemporary French economy, culture and society. Engaging with work in political economy and sociology, the book sketches a new interpretative framework, the better to understand the nature and implications of these profound changes. It examines the challenges such changes have posed to fundamental French republican values, arguing they have opened up a rift between older notions of French republican citizenship and the precarious forms of subjectivity characteristic of post-Fordist labour. The book traces the symptoms of this rift in a range of cinematic and literary representations of the contemporary workplace, as these depict the dilemmas faced, the trajectories followed, and the geographical regions inhabited by French workers of different ages, sexes, social classes, and ethnicities.